A wide variety of popular food products are prepared with heavy cream, such as conventional savory sauce and dessert-type dairy products. Conventional natural heavy cream has a limited shelf-life, typically less than two weeks under refrigerated storage conditions, which often results in unused waste product. Food manufacturers ideally desire to produce finished food products which are both organoleptically-pleasing but also sufficiently shelf-stable. In general, food preservation has been generally approached in the past, for instance, via direct acidulation, thermal treatment, chemical preservatives, hydrostatic treatment, refrigeration and combinations thereof. The challenge that is often faced is improving shelf life without diminishing the desirable sensory attributes, and thus the commercial value, of the food.
Food processing often requires pH adjustments to obtain desired product stabilities. The direct addition of organic food acidulants to provide a shelf stable dairy product also may lead to problems which may include unacceptable sour taste, and/or isoelectric precipitation of casein leading to grainy texture, emulsion breakdown, etc., For instance, conventional acidified dairy creams, such as sour cream and cream cheese, prepared by acidifying sweet cream with an organic acid, e.g., lactic, citric, or acetic acid, have an objectionable sour taste or acidic bite imparted to the acidified cream, and also in finished food products incorporating the sour cream. While conventionally acidified (sour) cream may be acceptable for limited recipe preparations, it is mostly unacceptable due to objectionable sour taste. Conventional acidified dairy creams also tend to contain large proportions of water relative to the solids content.
Low cost, high quality dairy products are largely unavailable in shelf stable form. Processes such as retort treatment or aseptic packaging have been used to prepare shelf stable dairy products; these processes are, however, very costly. Others use intermediate moisture preservation technology mainly depending on the use of humectants (e.g. glycerol) and preservatives (e.g. high salt, sorbic acid) which yield high solid, inferior products (e.g. rubbery or candy-like texture, unacceptable taste). Use of natural antimicrobial agents, such as nisin, can be effective for extending shelf-life in foods, but may increase material costs.
Food products also have been significantly thermally processed (e.g., pasteurized, or receive a more extreme thermal treatment such as retort) to provide shelf stability. Thermal processing potentially complicates production, degrades nutrition value and adds to production costs. In addition, heat sensitive food products in particular may not tolerate pasteurization or other significant heat treatment used to stabilize the food composition without sacrificing desirable sensory attributes thereof, e.g., taste, mouthfeel, texture, color, odor or lack thereof, etc. For instance, certain widely used non-sweetened foods containing a dairy product (e.g., milk, cheese, butter, cream, dairy proteins, etc.), such as some salad dressings, dips, spreads, sauces, fall under this category, as undesirable or diminished desirable flavor and/or mouthfeel, etc., results from a significant heat treatment thereof.
New and simple methods are desired for the preparation of shelf-stable dairy base materials having no undesirable sour off-taste, especially those which are useful as a heavy cream replacement in producing food products having characteristics, such as flavor and texture, and process functionality similar to that of conventional heavy cream. The present invention provides a stabilized dairy base material having an extended shelf life and improved physical stability which can be easily processed with other ingredients in the production of various food products without imparting undesirable sourness, texture, or other adverse impacts upon sensory properties.